


Speak to His Character

by honeycasp



Category: Macbeth - Shakespeare
Genre: Drabble, M/M, Sort of a character study, and his supportive if exhausted lesbian friend, its another malduff folks sorry, we stan one stupid bisexual learning to feel alright again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 02:10:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19843372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeycasp/pseuds/honeycasp
Summary: “Speak not of status, dear Duff, I speak not of status ere breakfast.” She paced the room slowly. “Speak of character.”





	Speak to His Character

**Author's Note:**

> i dont know if this is good but im performing for an audience of one and that audience is me. wahoo  
> (translation: its one in the morning. i just finished that really long hamratio fic, and now im working on something else that looks to be a MONSTER, and i needed a BREAK, but also its got me caught writing old-sounding dialogue, so here we are. i get caught up thinking about macduff a lot and ive had too much coffee to stop this runaway train. im losing my mind.)

He crumpled; he knew this. He’d been crumpled for years, slowly unfurling, a turtle out of its shell. He needed to stop thinking of himself as fragile; he’d known blood, and the act of decapitating a tyrant and holding him in victory by the locks of his thick hair separates one from the rest, does it not? Caithness insisted it doesn’t, but what does she know?

“You are a man as any other,” she said, on many occasions, checking in on him before any meetings, “with no reason to cling so desperately to guilt.”

“‘Tis not guilt.” He’d say.

“Ay, but he was a friend.”

“Was.”

That’s not what bothered him, mostly, though it was, but it wasn't the main point. It was the fact his castle was so empty. The fact his advisors insisted he remarried to fill the space, as if that would happen organically. As if he could take that.

Guilt, yes, that was what gripped Macduff, though not the guilt of killing Macbeth (that’s more an aching haunt, seeing the dead eyes fixed in regret before him); it was the guilt he saw in his blade’s reflection when he moved to cut his grief.

“Duff, give yourself this allowance.” Caith said once. “Tomorrow creeps another day, and with it rises the sun ardently over the hills. Rise too, ardently. A man more deserving of joy I have never seen.”

“Nay, I’ll tell, why so easily you say these words. You are yet unmarried, though in spirit be so, to no man, but the lady Menteith.”

She sighed. “We both know this well. Though I have seen my share of heavy blood, thou knowest, I lay with her, and ardently as the sun do I love her, o’er wrought with warmth, tragedy withstanding. For this reason must I urge you to lay down your whip; this self-flagellation mars even my skin.”

“Ay.”

“You wish to woo him, I know.”

He paused. “Ay.”

“Knowest thee well to which man I refer?”

“Ay, nay, a man far greater than men in status alone.”

“Speak not of status, dear Duff, I speak not of status ere breakfast.” She paced the room slowly. “Speak of character.”

“Shall I speak of character?” He looked up at her.

“Ay, should you not cling to the spectre of the hands which you once held, speak of his character.”

He paused, rolling his tongue in his cheek. “I’m inclined to believe a character of his is an M.”

“Macduff!”

“Once, when I was a lad, in the market I was sent, with pocket coin to give for food ere I traveled back to my castle.” He started. Caith sighed, anticipating a pointless story for the sake of distraction, and crumpled on the ground. “There I met a man, I know not his name, though he wore a foreign dress, and his speech had my young fancy. Quoth he, ‘Prithee, young sir, tell me the foremost character of thine name, and I shall unveil the honest truth of thine character.’ I did so.”

“What say he?” Caithness laid on the floor on her back, knees bent upwards.

“‘The M,’ quoth he, ‘is a quaint one, with its waves come the cleansing tides of water. It is healing, it is constant. It works tirelessly, though gently it will cradle one in its grip as a babe in the river. With it comes status, great status, but even more a sharp will to bring joy in its waters.’” Macduff paused. “As a boy I thought little of it.”

“What say’st thou as a man?”

“It fits me not. But this character can be spoken to him.” Before Caithness entered, he had been sat at a desk. Now, he noticed, the papers sat crumpled and ripped. He did so unconsciously. “Malcolm took me with no expedience. I fear he knows not whether or not he has me. Surely the knowledge would leave him wall-eyed. It is not in my interest to be making enemies of another king.”

She got up and shook herself off. “Enemies you should not be!” She was done with this. “See you not what stare he affixes to you, you, the unpregnant fool! Were it not for mine diplomatic integrity, I should scream to all Scotland he is taken!”

He blinked. “What?”

“The lust in his eyes. Know you not why he is unmarried?”

“What?”

She groaned in frustration. “I should quake with rage!”

“Know you this with surety? He should not abhor the sight of me?”

Caithness raised both arms in the air, asking the heavens for help.

“Prithee, Caith! Know you this with surety?”

“With absolute and judicious surety, ay. Quicken you, now?”

He looked down. His hands were filled with ripped shreds. “Ay.”

They had breakfast to get to, and a meeting soon after. He could consider her words for a while, and observe the man carefully, or, at least, more than he did already.

His advisors told him a new wife would be healing, the way water washes wounds. But he remembered the man in the marketplace, and the first character of Malcolm’s name, and watching him with awe as he breathed and blew away the scent of blood that hung in the air, and filled empty rooms, stretching with new work, tripping over himself. Charming wasn’t the right word, but it was close. Enrapturing.

He cut the thread. It had been long enough, he thought, and the string had already split by wear. The blade met empty space, but he felt it lighter.

For the first time in too long, Macduff unfurled, leaving vulnerable skin to open air, and let himself hope.

**Author's Note:**

> [hit me up on tumblr, folks!](https://lifeisdear.tumblr.com/) <3


End file.
